Since the mid-seventies, the prevalence of obesity has increased sharply for both adults and children. These increasing rates raise concern because of their implications for Americans' health. Being overweight or obese may increase the risk of many diseases and health conditions, including: hypertension, dyslipidemia (for example, high total cholesterol or high levels of triglycerides), type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis, sleep apnea and respiratory problems, and some cancers (such as endometrial, breast, and colon).
Obesity and its associated health problems have a significant economic impact on the U.S. health care system. Medical costs associated with excess weight and obesity may involve direct and indirect costs. Direct medical costs may include preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services related to obesity. Indirect costs relate to morbidity and mortality costs. Morbidity costs are defined as the value of income lost from decreased productivity, restricted activity, absenteeism, and bed days. Mortality costs are the value of future income lost by premature death.
Many therapies are currently being investigated for treatment of obesity and diseases associated with obesity. To date, the widely used obesity treatments have not been shown to be ideal, particularly for those afflicted with severe obesity. The approaches that have been proposed range from lifestyle coaching to major surgical therapies. Unfortunately, patient compliance and the accuracy with which patients report their own activities can significantly limit the effectiveness of coaching and support groups. While surgical approaches can limit the capacity of the patient's food intake over a set amount of time regardless of compliance, quite severe surgical modifications may have to be imposed to achieve the desired result. Notwithstanding that, as a group, obese patients may be highly motivated to find a solution to help them lose weight and to improve their health, obese individuals will often exhibit behavior which circumvents or limits the efficacy of therapies so that effective surgical approaches may have to significantly restrict gastrointestinal function, while more moderate approaches may not achieve the desired results. Nonetheless, improved awareness of obesity's role in increasing the incidence of other serious health issues is contributing to overweight consumers' desire to take a more active role in the management of their weight, lifestyle and health.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide devices, systems and methods that can effectively promote behavior modification of patients suffering from obesity and other eating disorders. It would also be desirable to provide services that would help increase a patient's perception of satiety and reduce caloric intake. It would also be desirable to provide improved assessment of a patient's actual behavior. Ideally, such a system would provide a patient, his or her physician, a lifestyle coach, support group, and/or other caregivers access to the information collected about the patient's eating and exercise habits for use in monitoring the patient's progress and so as to present actual behavior-based information to the patient for effective behavior modification and greater success in achieving weight loss or health goals.